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Boulder's Caffeine Fix MapLet's face it, Boulderites need their caffeine fix. Here's a map for local and visitors alike to discover some of the city's (and surrounding town's) best places to find a good cup of java.

Web/Tech

August 26, 2010

The Boulder County Business Report recognized nine area companies for their innovative products and services this week at the 10th anniversary celebration of the IQ (Innovation Quotient) Awards.

Winners and sponsors gathered on the stage of the Boulder Theatre for a group photo after all of the winners were announced. Some 65 companies were nominated, with finalists in nine different categories.

July 19, 2010

Photo of the Boulder Creek Festival on Memorial Day taken with iPhone 3GS.

Flag picture, taken at friend's Memorial Day picnic, was enhanced using the Photo fx app for iPhone.

Late afternoon iPhone photo on Haystack Mountain Golf Course in Boulder was taken with NightShot photo app, giving it a bit more light.

All of the fuss and Steve Jobs bashing about the iPhone 4’s
antenna problems haven’t mattered much to me since I’m still having fun
discovering new apps and learning how best to use my iPhone 3GS that I bought early
this summer. Yes, I was a latecomer to the iPhone, but I’m now a converted
fan.

One of the things I like best about the iPhone is having a
camera with me most of the time. As an amateur photographer who loves to shoot
and post pictures for friends and family both on Facebook and Flickr, my
preferred compact camera is the Canon PowerShot A2000 IS, a great yet
affordable camera with a 10 megapixels resolution and 6x optical zoom.Still, I don’t always remember to carry
it with me, or just don’t want to bother with the weight in my pocket.

With a 3.2 MP resolution in the iPhone 3GS, you can get some
pretty good shots … not great, but good enough. A friend asked me if the iPhone
could shoot photos to be used in a professional print brochure. The answer to
that is clear: No, get a better camera and probably spend a little money with a
professional photographer to make sure your business image is as good as it can
be.

With just a handful of excellent apps, you can greatly
improve the final outcome of your iPhone photographs. The iPhone 4, by the way,
has increased resolution to 5 MP, offers a new built-in LED flash and a front
and rear-facing camera lens. All good features that already makes me want to
upgrade – as soon as it can quit dropping calls from the present antenna
problem.

After reading several online reviews, and there are many, I
chose several apps to help me out with my iPhone 3GS photos. A few I now use
all the time, a few others only occasionally.

·CamZoom: This is probably the app I use the most
to shoot photos. The iPhone camera lacks a zoom feature, and for most shots, I
like to zoom in for a closer shot.The basic app is free with a PRO version for just 99 cents. It gives you
up to 5X digital zoom in real time.Sharing options include ability to send the photo by e-mail or post to
Facebook and Twitter. Another zoom app that I see recommended in reviews is
Camera Genius. My only complaint with CamZoom is that the zoom control is right
next to the shoot button, and it’s very easy to accidentally shoot a photo as
you are trying to zoom. That’s a
fix they need to make.

·Easily posting photos to Facebook and Twitter is
another great thing I love about the iPhone. It’s quick, and you’re able to
share a photo almost as quickly as you shoot it. I chose PhotoScatter as the
free app (a Pro version also available with faster downloads) to submit photos.
Using PhotoScatter you can post your pictures simultaneously to numerous sites,
including Facebook, Twitter (via Twitpic), Flickr, Shutterfly, PhotoBucket and
Picasa. After posting to Facebook, of course, you have to then go into your
Facebook account and approve the photo, but that’s also easily done via your
iPhone. Just be aware it’s an extra step you do need to make in order for your
photos to appear on Facebook.

·OK, you’ve shot a picture, but it’s a bit too
dark (common with the iPhone camera) or perhaps you’d just like to tweak the
colors a bit, maybe even add a special effect.Again, you have many choices, including an app for the
popular Photoshop. But I’ve been trying out Photo FX, where you can choose from
about 67 different filters ranging from Edge Glow to Sunset/Twilight
Temperature to a Wide-Angle Lens. Usually, Photo FX is just a fun tool to edit
your photo, including basic crop, rotate and straighten options, and then try
some different textures, even layering textures upon one another. PhotoFX has a
total of 780 presets with 117 different lighting patterns. So you can kill a
lot of time playing around in this app.

·A simpler, easy-to-use photo effect app is the
popular CameraBag, a $1.99 tool that’s fun to try out. To be honest, I don’t
use it that much anymore, but it does give you some interesting and simple
photo enhancements. It simulates styles from cameras of the past including 1974,
a faded, tinted look from your dad’s old cameras; and 1962, a high contrast
black and white shot.You can see
thousands of photos submitted by users at the web site, www.nevercenter.com/camerabag.

·Another weak point of the iPhone camera is its
inability to shoot in low light or even night situations. That’s why NightShot
comes in handy some times, giving you more light to your night photos. It gives
you three different types of a soft flash to get more light; low, medium and
high. For 99 cents, it’s a good app to have when you need it.

Give yourself a little time to
experiment and to figure out each new photo app, and that means shooting
several photos in different environments. For any photo that I really like I will usually do more
serious editing by downloading to my MacBook Pro and using either iPhoto
editing tools or Adobe Photoshop for much more detailed work.

When all is said and done, however,
I still love the iPhone camera for its flexibility of numerous photo apps, ease
of use and just having it with me nearly all of the time in my pocket. There’s
also the iPhone video, but that’s another story for another time.

June 10, 2010

For a city with 10 breweries -- all with tasting rooms, and arguably the birthplace of the the microbrew craft industry, Boulder is the perfect spot for a new conference Nov. 5-7, the world's first Beer Bloggers Conference.

Now here's a conference I think I can enjoy covering because not only will it include sessions on social media, how the online media is covering the beer industry but, of course, it includes tasting beers.

I'll come back and keep you posted when I learn more about this "tasty" conference idea, but in the meantime, here's what some people had to say in PR that just went out today.

"When
I saw the announcement about the conference, I rushed to get my credit card out
because I have a feeling this will fill up quickly," said Gerard Walen of Road Trips For Beer. "Boulder
is one of my favorite cities to visit, and I'm looking forward to going back
there and meeting some of the folks in person that I only know on the beer
blogosphere."

Conference
organizer Zephyr Adventures, a
Montana-based adventure travel company, already co-organizes both the Wine
Bloggers Conference and the International Food Bloggers Conference. “The Wine Bloggers Conference has
provided increased credibility for wine bloggers, connected bloggers with the
wine industry, and improved both the quality and quantity of wine blogging
around the world”, says Zephyr’s owner Allan Wright. “We think the Beer
Bloggers Conference will have a similar positive effect on the beer industry.”

Boulder business, education
and government leaders took a look into the future 25 years from now and saw
everything from a much older population and a shrinking employment base to a
digital media and outdoor recreation Mecca that continues to attract
“multi-preneurs.”

But as University of Colorado
economist Richard Wobbekind reminded attendees at the 2010 Economic Summit on
the University of Colorado campus Wednesday, in the words of Yogi Berra, “It’s
tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

That said, there were no
shortage of experts from the hot business sectors of clean tech, digital media,
natural & organic foods, outdoor recreation and biotech willing to stick
their necks out and make a forecast. The theme for the well-attended summit,
sponsored by the Boulder Economic Council and CU, was “Boulder in 2035:
Opportunities & Insights.”

First, a few of the facts,
emphasized by both business research statistics from CU and generally what
everyone that lives in Boulder already knows.

“Boulder has drawn a line in
the sand,” said David Driskell, director of community planning and
sustainability for the city. “We’re not going to grow out, we’re going to grow
in.”

Redevelopment of Boulder
areas such as its east Arapaho corridor (near CU’s developing east campus) and
the aging Diagonal Marketplace retail center are where the city will be placing
its attention.

The reality, Driskell
emphasized, is that Boulder will never be all things to all people.And that no doubt includes businesses
looking for larger manufacturing facilities. “We’re going to continue to
incubate startups,” he said.

If you just happened to move
into the city and somehow remain oblivious to Boulder’s staunch slow-growth
philosophy, several charts and graphs from Wobbekind put some new wrinkles on a
well-known story.

For a city that’s long touted
its place as an entrepreneurial haven for high tech, the numbers now show
employment in advanced tech sectors are actually declining. Technology brings
higher productivity, Wobbekind explained, resulting in fewer jobs for high-tech
workers. The most recent example? Hewlett-Packard’s announcement of some 9,000
layoffs from its technology-services division, where data centers will become
fully automated.

In the recent recession, more
than 70 percent of the lost wages in Colorado occurred in advanced tech sectors
that included professional services, manufacturing and information.

In other not-so-shocking news
for anyone who’s been in Boulder for very long, Wobbekind forecasted a nearly
flat growth rate through 2035, for both employment and population growth, while
“satellite” cities like Broomfield, Longmont and Erie will continue to attract
new jobs and increase their populations.

Another Boulder Valley city,
Louisville, which is making a conscious decision to limit housing but
encouraging commercial growth, also may find its job growth limited as
employers seek out cities where their employees can find homes.

“It’s just not getting any
cheaper to live in Boulder or Louisville,” Wobbekind said.

High on Wobbekind’s list of
changing demographics not to be ignored is the fact that Boulder, like all of
Colorado, is aging.

Everyone who moved in during
the growth years of the ‘70s and ‘80s are now nearing retirement age. In the
city of Boulder alone, Wobbekind says the 55 to 69 age group and those over 70
will have the most dramatic increase in numbers in the next 25 years.

Services such as health care
and transportation, as well as a declining tax base as seniors reduce their
spending, are all areas to watch, he said.

Although rail and other
multi-modal transportation choices may become available, expect an increase in
commuters driving cars in search of job centers. Even shorter trips are going
to take longer due to congestion.

Not all forecasters, however,
bemoaned a future of gray-haired senior citizens clogging up the freeways.

Panelists looking at the future
of digital media reminded summit attendees that Crispin Porter + Bogusky, a
global advertising company billing $1.7 billion annually, came to Boulder
because it knew the city’s quality of life would attract the younger talent it
needs to survive and grow.

Looking very far ahead is
nearly impossible in the fast-changing digital world, said Winston Binch, a
partner with CP+B. “Just figuring out what will happen next week is a
challenge.”

The company is moving much of
its work to the mobile platforms, as the I-Pad and millions of new mobile phone
apps dramatically change the way businesses reach their new customers.

Foundry Group venture
capitalist Seth Levine said the rise of digital media is allowing marketers to
measure their results like never before.

Social media and software
geeks are the new “Mad Men” of the advertising world, Levine said, and Boulder,
with resident companies like OneRiot, Lijit, video ad network SpotXchange, creative
agency Victors & Spoils and even Google, are creating a “nexus” of
communication companies for the future.

With CP+B helping to launch
the Boulder Digital Works with CU, and other tech gatherings like Glue or TechStars
gaining national attention, Boulder continues to stir up a pot of the right
ingredients for digital media success.

Boulder also continues to grow
its reputation as an epicenter for both the natural and organics food movement
and outdoor recreation and sporting goods companies.

Organic foods veteran Barney
Feinblum predicted that the word “natural” will probably disappear from food
labeling as “organic” becomes the accepted standard. As an example, he pointed
out that organic milk producer Horizon is now the leading brand of milk being
sold in the U.S.

While organic products today are
only about 3.5 percent of the market, he believes price premiums will decline,
and organic goods will capture up to 25 percent of the food market in the next 25 years.

A company like Whole Foods,
Feinblum said, will expand beyond organic and healthy foods to selling electric
cars and home renewable energy systems.

“Our industry is looking to
get ahead of the curve on sustainability,” explained Lori Herra with the Outdoor
Industry Association. And this presents environmental challenges when most of
the outdoor recreation products are manufactured overseas.

Even on the federal level,
Herra said, the conversation is starting to change from “extraction” on federal
lands to recognizing the economic strengths of “recreation.”

February 13, 2010

Mary Ann Mahoney, left, director of the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, with Heather Clisby, project coordinator for the inaugural DiMe symposium at the St. Julien Hotel in Boulder.

Don Hall, left, producer of Disney's The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, was a panelist for DiMe. He also directed Walking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary being shown at the Boulder International Film Festival.

Who's a creative? Just about everyone, a panel of exceptionally creative people agreed at Boulder's DiMe Digital Media Convergence Symposium -- the inaugural year for the event that helped kick off the Boulder International Film Festival weekend.

But the emergence of a plethora of easier-to-use and often mobile technologies and media is widening how many people, including many children, are starting to put themselves into the rather loosely defined category of "creatives."

The huge acceptance of blogging and social media now makes millions of people across the globe into published writers. "I think self-publishing has widened the world" of creatives, said David Rolfe, a producer with Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Boulder.

The symposium, organized by the Colorado Governor's new office of Film Television & Media and the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, packed the St. Julien Hotel room with about 200 people to hear a panel of eight experts talk about what's hot in the fast-changing world of new media. Robert Reich, founder of Boulder's OneRiot who also has grown the Boulder Denver Tech Meetup from about 50 to 5,000 registered users, moderated the panel.

With the success of the 3-D Avatar movie, the topic of how quickly 3-D will be adopted was high on the list. Calling the hit movie a "significant event," Rolfe said the movie has changed viewers attitudes from whether they thought it was a good movie plot or not to "Wow, that was quite an experience."

Theaters are now in a catch-up mode, said Don Hahn, a producer with Disney, to jump on the more profitable 3-D movie experience. "It's a real game changer," he said, adding that there are now about 80 3D theaters being installed each week. The 3D theaters, he said, generate about 50 percent more profit than standard movies.

The panel also debated whether the new Apple iPad would be another "game changer." Boulder-based venture capitalist Jason Mendelson, a partner in the Foundry Group, had his doubts, saying he wasn't that sold on it yet, although he certainly was going to buy one.

But other panelists, including Aidan Chopra, with Google's Sketchup office in Boulder, and Krista Marks, one of the founders of Kerpoof that was bought by Disney Interactive Media Group in 2008, quickly disagreed, saying the iPad 's tablet functionality will start to change the way people can access both entertainment and games as well as their work.

The more ways kids can start to use creative platforms like Kerpoof on the Internet, the more they will continue to expand their skills to become the future technologists and engineers, Marks said.

Life is not all roses with so many emerging technologies, the panel agreed, citing how different platforms -- everything from the Apple iPhone to Google's Android and the new Palm Pre -- fracture the the playing field for software developers.

Brian Robbins, a game developer who started his own company Riptide Games, says his goal is to attract attention quickly in the very crowded world of mobile game apps, but getting each game to work on the different platforms makes his business much tougher.

Competing against some 30,000 to 40,000 game apps right now for mobile phones, Robbins said, "If you're not looked at in the first 30 seconds to a minute, they're (the user) are gone."

Other conclusions by the panel included:

* Internet users may have to realize that not everything is going to be free on the Internet. "We need to teach people to pay for stuff again," Sketchup's Chopra said. Sketchup has grown rapidly since its acquisition by Google because a "free" version is offered. But the company also sells a "pro" version with more features.

* No matter the media, the story and content is still critical. "Storytelling is in our caveman genes," Hahn said.

* The DVD format could soon be in trouble, as more people begin to download their media. Younger people are downloading more movies, and "they are totally satisfied," said Michael Brown, founder of Serac Adventure Films and Film School.

The panel forecast that it won't be long before the movie industry will offer new releases in DVD format and download formats on the same day as the movie is released. Piracy is one of the factors creating change. "If you don't give consumers exactly what they want, they will just take it," Mendelson said.

After the symposium, Mary Ann Mahoney, director of the Boulder Convention and Visitor's Bureau, said there's a good chance that DiMe might be expanded next year, perhaps to include some interactive workshops and more presentations.

A one-stop virtual gateway to the 2010 Winter Olympics, including bios,
medals won and hometowns of all the U.S. Olympians, is now online at
www.olympicsin3D.com.

Boulder-based
EarthvisionZ created the fun, dynamic site that
lets you experience the Olympics in a 3D world without ever leaving home.

Fly
through the city of Vancouver, see Olympic event centers, zoom down the slopes
on Whistler and Cypress Mountain race courses and learn more about the
completing athletes from around the world.

Designed for both Vancouver visitors as
well as the millions of Olympics followers around the globe, users also can
check on event times, current weather, and search results by athlete or
country.Tourists in the Vancouver
area can look up restaurants, bars or the nearest coffee shop as well as access
regional transportation, hotel information, and most relevant to travelers by
car – the International Border Station wait times.

With
a few clicks at www.olympics3D.com, track Facebook and Twitter feeds of
individual athletes from their online biographies; follow the instant, live
search of social media discussions about the Olympics from the Boulder-basedOneRiot search engine and even access television schedules for the entire games.

EarthvisionZ
has created similar sports and tourism information sites for the 2008 Beijing
Summer Olympics, Sports Illustrated’s Top 100 Golf Courses You Can Play, and
their own EarthgamZ site where they are currently aggregating a variety of
world sports on a virtual Earth.Their sport playgrounds combine the geospatial imagery of Google Earth
with the company’s patented search capabilities to assemble athlete stats and
profiles, game schedules, venues, sports news, medal counts, tickets and much
more on a single Web site.

“We’ve
built a site that lets you experience the excitement of the Winter Olympics
using a combination of social, search and Google Earth’s plug-in technology,”
said Carla Johnson, chief executive officer of EarthvisonZ. “ The site is
designed as a test-bed for future major global sporting events, including
everything from World Cup soccer to cycling to professional golf.”

Users
will be prompted to download the fast-loading Google Earth plug-in if they
haven’t used it already.The site
will be configured to be accessible to mobile phone users on their next event.

October 14, 2009

Spanish flamenco guitarist Paco Pena and his dancers' performance at Boulder Theater brought the audience to their feet several times in the two-hour show. I won a "retweet" contest for tickets to the show.

Nothing's wrong with good, simple marketing ideas in Twitter. In fact, isn't that what Twitter was supposed to be all about?

One of the easiest ideas to get your business message circulating is offering an incentive -- a simple contest for example -- asking your followers to retweet your tweet. I've seen this being used effectively by many Boulder area businesses, and it's so easy to do.

This week, the Boulder Theater was promoting an evening performance of Paco Pena, one of the best flamenco guitarists in the world. They offered up the chance for two concert tickets to anyone who retweeted their short promo for the show. Instead of just reaching their Twitter followers, their message spread out to the followers of many of their followers.

Personally I like to save my retweets for things I find especially interesting and that I think Boulderites and others who follow me might also like to know about. A world-class Spanish flamenco guitarist is not someone you get the chance to hear everyday in Colorado, but it was certainly the "contest" that got me to help promote the show. I'll be honest, I'd never heard of this performer. Now I'm a fan.

So guess what? I won the contest, and off I went to what turned out to be one of the best shows I've seen. The audience loved the exciting combination of flamenco guitarists and dancers.

The contest is such a simple idea, and now I'm even giving back a little more publicity to the Boulder Theater by thanking them for the free tickets.

Allison and I also went to George's Food and Drink, the very cozy and comfortable bar that now adjoins the theater and is the perfect spot for a drink and food before or after the show. So even though I won the tickets, they still got a paying customer.

I do think you need to offer up an enticing offer for your retweet competition -- concert tickets were great, but you might consider a free meal or bottle of wine if you run a restaurant. Make it really worth while for me to retweet your business -- a discount where I have to buy something anyway probably isn't enough incentive for me.

The concert seats were also in the reserved section, not stuck somewhere in the back of the theater.

With a tweet announcing the winner, you show that the contest was serious and hopefully your winner will tweet back their thanks! That starts to add up to quite a few messages flying around promoting your business, not to mention all of the good karma!

I did find an archive of some simple retweet contests online at a site called Retweet Please. There might be a few ideas there for you to use in your business.

October 06, 2009

I’ve heard of entrepreneurs starting up companies in their
basement before, but this one’s a little different.

Boulder’s TechoShark Inc., which has developed a mobile
social networking iPhone app, got its start as a class project in the computer
systems lab, which happens to be in the basement of CU’s Engineering building.

This is the sort of tech-transfer story that takes place
because of CU’s emphasis on research, and it has pulled together professor,
students and campus intellectual property staff. No one is making money just
yet, but the idea seemed good enough that both Dr. Richard Han, computer
science professor, and his doctoral student, Aaron Beach, as well as several
others working on the project chose to incorporate and start a company.

Mobile computing is a specialty area for Han, and a hot
growth area, with smart phone growth exceeding the PC market.

In December 2007, Han asked his grad students to pick a
computer project, and Aaron pitched the idea of combining the personal identity
and GPS location awareness of a mobile phone with the “friendship” data of
social media like Facebook or Twitter.

The idea was intriguing, especially at a time when iPhone
apps were taking off. Instead of student teams on different projects, Han let the
entire class to take on the assignment.

The application is called hoozat – and it allows a Facebook
user (Twitter users just added) to locate friends who are nearby, even in the
same room, and connect using their iPhone to read their profiles, see their
interests and message them.

These days I often write from various coffee shops around
town full of interesting characters, and I told Han I once had a similar idea.
“Why can’t I see who in this room is perhaps online using Facebook, Twitter or
LinkedIn?” It’s rude, of course, to walk over and peer over their shoulder.

Now, if two or more of us had hoozat on iPhones, we could
meet wirelessly.

TechoShark launched its app for free, hoping to glean information
on how it would be used before setting a price. Today, the space for iPhone
program and game developers is packed, with some 25,000 apps out there and
nearly one billion downloaded. Getting attention against virtual fishing rods,
calorie counters or popping bubble wrap apps is one of TechoShark’s biggest
challenges.

Still, it’s been a pretty good year for the venture, having
won a $100,000 Small Business Innovation Research grant in January, which gives
them better odds at winning Phase II funding. TechoShark’s business plan won
$3,000 for computer science in CU’s New Venture Challenge, and the company won
an IQ Innovation Award from the Business Report. CU recently signed a
technology licensing agreement, which gives the university equity in the
company.

TechoShark is maturing with several business advisers, and
some have suggested targeting the events and meetings space.Having both organized and attended networking
meetings where the idea of having of bug on your name tag and seeking out
others in your insect family seems a bit humiliating, I think hoozat might find
a good niche here.

With possible SBIR or investor funding, TechoShark sees a
move to other mobile phones like Blackberry or phones with Google’s Android.
Han says hoozat was developed to be “agnostic” of particular platforms, but the
hot-selling iPhone seemed like the place to start.

Looking at the multitude of social media apps being
developed, Beech admits, “Anyone that tells you where this is all going is
probably not right.”

The developers intentionally kept hoozat fairly simple to
start out.There are competing
Web-based mobile location companies out there, including Denver-based
Brightkite, which has features allowing you to post photos or notes to your
location.

A mapping feature for hoozat, Han says, would allow users to
locate specific events as well as people. A search function could list events
by categories, such as sports or business conferences.New features like these might be
wrapped into a “premium” version that could generate revenue. Their business
plan looks for a revenue stream in 2010, with at least a break-even bottom line
in 2011.

Just figuring out with path to take, of course, is what
makes or breaks an entrepreneurial venture.

So now for the question that Arron’s already tired of
hearing. Why the spelling of TechoShark, and not TechnoShark? Turns out, when
he offered the idea to his class, he made a typo in the presentation. But
classmates liked the ring of TechoShark. And a company was born in a CU
basement.

June 05, 2009

Mark Emery, left, executive director of Imagine!, and Bob and Judy Charles show architectural drawing of the new SmartHome, which will open in Boulder this summer. The home will be one of the first in the nation, and serve as a model for future of residential care for people with cognitive disabilities.

I'm excited to help spread the word that Imagine!, a Lafayette, Colo.-based nonprofit providing care to people with cognitive and physical disabilities, has just launched a new "fan" page on Facebook, and is making more plans to expand its reach through social media.

This summer Imagine! will complete and open its new Bob and July Charles SmartHome at 18th and Iris streets in Boulder. This home, and another to be built in Longmont, will be national models for how the latest technologies, as well as green building, can be used in a community home to assist the residents. The technologies will make the caregivers more effective, too, by allowing them to track medications, computerize reminders about client needs and monitor sensors for better awareness and accountability of residents.

The SmartHome project will be exciting to watch, and much more information is available online from Imagine! including photos, videos and architectural drawings of the new homes.

I serve on the Imagine! Foundation, which was started to raise money to help pay off the mortgages of several existing homes, and now we're in a new fund-raising capital campaign to complete the SmartHomes. You can make a secure online donation for the SmartHome campaign, or you could contact me personally for information about the campaign and how you could help.

Imagine! will be putting out a lot more information and news as the SmartHomes project advances. I hope you'll follow the progress.

April 17, 2009

Dave Rogers gets a plug for his new social media startup, Localbunny.com, at Downtown Boulder's breakfast meeting discusson on using social media.

A good pounding of wet spring snow couldn't keep more than 100 downtown Boulder businesspeople from learning more about how to tweet, blog, yelp and simply try to understand the rapidly growing world of social media.

While it's so easy to think you're drowning in the flood -- make that "deluge" -- of social media sites, there's always something new to discover. A few of us had some slightly nervous laughs learning we're getting close to an emerging "silver surfer" crowd (60 years and older). The breakfast presentation at the Hotel Boulderado also included good info on Yelp, which came to the Denver area with its restaurant and retail reviewers just about a year ago.

Flashing a Powerpoint page showing literally hundreds of social media site logos, Amy Moynihan and Ashley Cohen of GoundFloor Media told the downtowners not to panic if they're new to the social media world. "Pick one or two, and just dip your toe into it," Moynihan said to one woman who asked why she shouldn't run away screaming from the whole social media invasion.

Facebook, Twitter and Yelp could be the top three mediums to get started on in the online conversations and marketing that include everything from blogs, wikis, podcasts, vlogs, Internet forums, virtual communities and micro-blogging (Twitter.)

If you're running a "brick and morter" retail location, Moynihan said, you absolutely need to be taking a look at Yelp, because probably there's already a "yelper" posting a review of your service or product online. The really active "yelpers," she said, get to be "elite yelpers."

I'm a "fan" of Downtown Boulder's Facebook page, and heard about this latest Downtown Community Exchange via their Twitter. Downtown Boulder is actively promoting various "specials" or pointing to reviews -- national and local -- of restaurants and other businesses. New DBI Director Sean Maher told me the Dish, a gourmet sandwich shop, tweeted a secret "password" to followers, offering a one-day discount to whoever knew the word. About 40 customers came in with the tweet word of the day.

GroundFloor Media pushed home the point that Facebook and other social media are not just for teens anymore. Demographics show the fastest-growing group using social media is 25 years and older, and that includes a whole bunch of us -- let's say "somewhat older" adults (whew, found out I'm not yet a silver surfer after all) -- who are starting to "surf" with the teen set. (The leading topic right now for the next Ignite Boulder, by the way, is "My mom just joined Facebook, now what?)

eMarketer, the morning presentation showed, is predicting the number of U.S baby boomers using the Internet at least once a month (you have to wonder who uses the Internet just once a month?) will jump by 5 million to almost 64 million in 2011.

As snow piled up outside the Boulderado, Dave Rogers, former publisher of the Onion in Boulder, announced he's just launched a new social media tool called Local Bunny. This just-born startup, unveiled recently at the Boulder Denver New Technology Meetup, allows businesses and organizations to not only get their specific business noticed, but to list specific dates and schedules. Local Bunny will then push that information out to social media like Facebook and Twitter, letting users search information not just by name, but by the "time" of a class or event.

Dave told me he's just out of the gates with this one, but quickly showed me on his iPhone how he could search Twitter by typing "@localbunny yoga, boulder" and bring up a listing of Boulder yoga classes by time. Looking for a 9 a.m. class? There they are, or at least that's the idea.

Downtown Boulder will be planning some more smaller sessions for DBI businesses on social media, and here's my suggestion: Get a bigger room. I tried to get into one of the social media sessions at the World Affairs Conference, where a whole bunch of the "silver surfers" were grabbing all the seats, and people had to be turned away.

Hey, I've got to end this blog. While writing, a tweet came in showing downtown Boulder restaurant Bimbamboo is following me. I love their "small plates" menu ... think Asian tapas. Now I'm following them, too.